How patents and copyrights differ in the protections they offer to source code?
By Yahoo User • Category: Do I Need It To Patent?Can anyone explain how patents and copyrights differ in the protections they offer to software source code. In what ways a software company can benefit from patents and copyright? In what ways it might be a challenge to work around. Please just explain how they work instead of personal opinion. Thanks a lot.
Copyright means that you have protections if anyone directly copies your work. You can bring an action against that other party for infringing the work. However, if they happen to come up with exactly the same idea while working independently, then there’s nothing you can do since that might be the same work, but it’s not copied.For patent, software is probably a business method patent. Your software implements some way of doing something, and that method gets patent protect. The patent allows you to keep anyone else from doing the same thing. This generally has a few exceptions such as for people who were using the same method, perhaps as a trade secret, prior to when you filed for the patent. So with a patent, someone else can’t do exactly the same thing because you can keep them from making, using, or selling the method.As for the rest of it, this really sounds like a homework problem, and I’d rather you did your own research. Start with this article: http://www.idea.piercelaw.edu/articles/30/p265.Einhorn.pdf